Babulal's new threat: Congress offered me Lok Sabha seat, says BJP leader

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former chief minister (CM) of Madhya Pradesh Babulal Gaur is creating trouble for his party with unfailing regularity. On Thursday, he said senior Congress leader and former CM Digvijaya Singh had approached him to contest the coming Lok Sabha election from Bhopal on a Congress ticket. "I told him I will think about it," Gaur said. A few months ago, Gaur had threatened to jump ship when the BJP denied him the ticket for the Assembly election. He was pacified when party President Amit Shah met him and gave the ticket for his traditional seat of Govindpura to his daughter-in-law, Krishna Gaur. She won the seat by a comfortable margin.

Kamal Nath is game

Looks like Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath has decided he will not take the alleged overtures by the Bharatiya Janata Party to some Congress ministers lying down. While talking to the media on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, Nath said, "This is not a one-sided game. If they play tennis with us, we will obviously not play table tennis. About five to six BJP MLAs are in touch with me. They don't see any future in that party and want to join the Congress." Earlier, at least two Congress MLAs had accused the BJP of offering them ~100 crore to unsettle the government in the state.

What’s brewing?

A late night meeting between Congress Member of Parliament Jyotiraditya Scindia and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has set tongues wagging in the state's political circles. While the two leaders dubbed the 40-minute unscheduled meeting a courtesy call, Chouhan was seen stepping out of his house at the end of the meeting to see Scindia off till his car. The two had fought tooth and nail in the run-up to the election but appeared to have put all that behind. The two leaders did not reveal the details of the conversation; Scindia said the government and the Opposition should work together. "Raat gayi, baat gayi (let bygones be bygones)." Chouhan echoed the sentiment: "Koi gila nahin, koi shikwa nahin. (I have no complaint or grudge).”